


Heaven Shall Not Shut Thee In

by Morpheus626



Category: Night at the Museum (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:15:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25046752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morpheus626/pseuds/Morpheus626
Summary: A sort of Ahk mini series thing here, since the two fics I’ve written are kind of connected. I can’t explain more without just telling y’all everything abt it but it’ll make sense once you read ‘em lol.title comes from this translation of the Egyptian Book of The Dead I found: https://www.holybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/Egyptian-Book-of-the-Dead.pdfNot my fave translation, but I like the phrase and how it relates re: Ahkmenrah.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 23





	1. Part One

No one knows him, when he returns. He wears his royal garb, his bearing regal, but they walk past him as if he isn’t there.

He isn’t, really, but even if he was he finds he wouldn’t mind. To simply be there again, truly, and walking among these people long dead would be a gift. 

But the dream is as close as he can get, and he is grateful for it. It feels just real enough, the sand just warm enough, the water just cold enough, the air familiar enough that he can pretend. 

The palace is where he goes first, every time, though it is always fractured in its presentation. Rooms that he knows existed cannot be found, other areas visible but impassable, as though there is an invisible wall in front of them. 

The sense is that his mind is protecting him from something. From what, he doesn’t know. It was home, a place of love and family and safety. But there is an itch, in the back of his mind that scratches at that surface, and makes him wonder what there was that he apparently can’t see. 

He ignores it, or tries to, fights off the urge to dwell on it as he walks out of the palace and on to the river. No one pays any mind as he drops pieces of his clothing as he goes, until he is down to his shendyt. 

The Nile is cool on his skin as he lays at her banks, letting the water lap over him. Any dangers she held in the past do not exist in the dream, and so he finds himself sometimes spending the majority of the dream there. People-watching, napping, just existing. 

Sometimes he wishes the people could see and hear him. There is so much he could tell them of the future, though he knows they’d likely scoff at it all as the ravings of a madman. But he wants to tell them nonetheless, to show them the world that his life after death has shown him.

Some nights, his mind is too unsettled by chasing what he can’t remember. What perhaps he shouldn’t want to remember. After all, surely many people would be happy to die and never know exactly what caused it, if it meant not feeling any pain. He doesn’t feel any pain now, when he tries to recall his death, just that scratching, that itch, something in him screaming that there’s more there for him to know, but he can’t see it, can’t bring the memory forth. 

It can’t have been as simple as passing in his sleep though. That he knows for sure. If he had inexplicably, mysteriously, too quickly fallen ill and died, then there would be no unrest in his heart, begging for him to remember. The not knowing would not eat at him like it does. 

As night falls, he walks again from the river, stealing a shawl or blanket from whatever homes he might pass. They will not miss it, in the dream. The river’s water dries on his skin as he wanders. Again, there is no danger as there might have been in reality. 

Yet the closer he gets to the palace again, the more anxious he becomes, the more he feels a deep fear. 

But he has to go back in. Always, he goes back in. 

He wanders the halls, and waits. Looking to see if the missing rooms come back, in particular, his rooms. Where they were, there is only a wall. He sits in front of it, and stares, as if his eyes alone will bring it down. 

Some nights, it is too much, too infuriating. He claws at the wall, the shawl falling from his shoulders, drawing blood as he spends hours trying to rip it down, his nails tearing and throbbing with pain. 

There is something there, his mind screams at him, and because he knows no one will hear, he lets himself scream, cry at the frustration of it all. What more can he do, if the wall will not be moved. How can he remember, if the same part of his mind that tells him the knowledge is there will not let him access it. 

Some nights, when Larry or the others come to wake him, he finds his fingers ache horribly. They remember the actions in his dream, and he wonders how a dream can be so powerful. 

It leaves him scouring the ancient Egyptian books in the gift shop, searching the stacks of research journals in the back hidden rooms of the museum. The answers he wants, needs, are never there, but he can’t not look. 

It is a mix of apprehension and excitement that falls over him as the morning approaches. Perhaps, this time, if he has the dream again, this time he will be successful. His rooms will appear. He will remember. 

Even if he doesn’t, he will be home again for a bit, at least. And he will rest by the Nile, and try to quiet the itch at the back of his mind.


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And here’s the second one! Took some details from the original version of the NATM scripts, which talk more abt what happened to Ahk to land him in a sarcophagus, and just sort of went from there in terms of working canon in here lol. This isn’t my happiest fic by far, but I’m glad to have written it. 
> 
> A big ass warning for violence though. It is in this, and explicitly described.

The halls of the museum are quiet when he wakes. The lights are on, exhibit spaces empty of their inhabitants, but it is silent as death.

When he finally finds them, they are all in the main hall, huddled near the front desk around Larry. 

“Not yet. I promise, I will show him this. But not now. Let’s give him a heads up first, let him know there’s something he needs to read, and he can look at it on his own-” Larry is saying as he approaches.

“He will need comfort,” Teddy interrupts. “And company. It will be devastating to him, Lawrence. We cannot even begin to imagine the pain it will bring Ahkmenrah-” 

“What will?” he asks, and they turn almost in unison. 

“My boy,” Teddy says, and rushes through the crowd to hug him. It’s a bear hug, but a comforting one, even if he doesn’t know why he is deserving of it in the moment. 

“Tell me,” he says gently, and Teddy lets him go with a sigh. 

“Well,” Larry starts. “They’ll have to update the plaque. The informational one about you, in your exhibit. There’s been a discovery, apparently. Some of the other staff were talking about it and I found the journal article and…look, you don’t have to read it right away. Only when you’re ready.” 

He moves quick as he can, and grabs the article from Larry’s hand before he can pull it away.

A article from a scientific/historical journal. ‘The Death of Ahkmenrah: A Mystery Solved.’

He skims it, then goes back to reread it, and lets Larry and Teddy help him to a chair at the desk as his legs weaken.

_“The discovery of a new tablet, found amongst otherwise unremarkable sands, has solved an ages-old mystery. How did the young, and presumed healthy, Ahkmenrah die? Little information has ever been found to hint at it, even after excavation of his tomb.  
_

_Until now._

_A confession, recently translated by several top translators in the field, from Ahkmenrah’s own brother, Kahmunrah, reveals the truth. It reads:_

_I have finally rid us of him, cleared my path to the throne, and still it is lost to me. 73 stab wounds to him, and still they will not give me the throne. He lays in ribbons, his blood stains the floor of his room, I have lain his weakness out for them, to see he was not fit to live nor to rule. And it was all for naught. Better I should have killed us both, and left them with no one to inherit it.”_

He can read no further, can only hear the beating of his own heart thudding heavy in his ears. He can feel Teddy’s hand on his shoulder, but it barely registers. There is just the beating and the words in front of him. 

_“73 stab wounds”  
_

_“He lays in ribbons”  
_

_“Kahmunrah”_

“He wouldn’t,” he says it so quietly he can barely hear himself. He shakes his head. “Why would he…” 

“I’m so sorry,” Larry murmurs as he kneels down in front of him. He’d forgotten Larry was a father, or perhaps just not had that as the first thing he saw him as, until now. The concern in his eyes is paternal, caring. “He shouldn’t…no one should ever do that, to anyone. Hurt them like that. No throne could ever be worth the act of killing family.” 

He hates how he knows he must look right now, bent in half sitting in the chair, with his head in his hands, the article dropped to the floor. He feels Teddy carefully remove the crown from his head so it won’t fall, and wants to thank him.

But all that comes are tears, wailing and weeping as everything his mind kept from him comes flooding back. 

He’s in his room. Kahmunrah stands in front of him, wearing a malicious smile. He needs to leave, needs to get past his brother now, he knows that. 

“If you simply say you wish the throne go to me first, they will allow it,” Kahmunrah says. “They would do anything for you, anything at all. If you aren’t ready to rule, I can hold the throne until you are. Don’t let them push you to it.” 

He shakes his head. “They aren’t. And even if they were, I would not question them. They are our parents, best is to do as they instruct, and they have asked me to take the throne next. So I shall.” 

As the last word leaves his mouth, the knife Kahmunrah holds, with its gilded hilt, goes into his chest. 

At first, it doesn’t hurt. He can see the knife, but it isn’t until a moment later that the throbbing pain sets in, and he tries to run. 

Kahmunrah yanks the knife from his body, and grabs him, pushes him back towards the wall as he attacks again, and again, and again. Silent except for the sounds of his exertion, even as he begs mentally for him to say something.

Say something to me, anything, but do not leave me to die in silence.

But he says nothing, and ceases his stabbing only when Ahkmenrah falls to the floor, his torso so ripped apart that there is nothing solid enough left to stab again. 

As Kahmunrah leaves, Ahkmenrah finds himself staring at his hands, the remnants of his torso. The combined wounds are open enough he can see organs, in pieces, spilling out even as he tries to hold them in. He had no idea there was so much blood in the body, or that it could dry so quickly on his hands as the rest trickles out onto the floor. 

He waits there, for someone, anyone. A guard, servant, his mother or his father. 

But when he finally can fight it no longer, lets his eyes finally close and the breath leave him, there is no one. 

He comes back to himself in Larry’s arms, clinging to him like a child. The wracking sobs have brought on nausea, and he’s grateful for the bucket (probably stolen from a janitorial cart) that Teddy holds near his mouth as he retches.

There are voices around him, Larry and Teddy and Sacagawea, then Attila and Octavious and Jed, all blending together, none of them loud enough to drown out the screaming in his head. 

He sees it all from outside himself, as they walk him to the employee lounge, sit him on the couch, try to gently take off his sweat-soaked garb. He pushes them away; it’s too much like a funerary undressing and he can’t handle it.

He curls up on his side on the couch, and the voices fade until it’s just Sacagawea. She sings something he can’t understand, but it’s soothing. 

“You’re okay,” she murmurs as he whimpers. “The past is gone, and you are safe in the present. Come back to the present with me. Tell me what you see around you now.” 

The room comes back into focus, and he realizes he is laying on her, his head in her lap. She’s sitting upright, apparently comfortable as anything, humming and running her hand gently through his curls. His mother used to do the same, when he’d run to her after a nightmare, and he wishes he had the words to thank Sacagawea for doing it now. 

“What do you see?” she prods, softly.

“The TV,” he croaks.

“Good, what else?” 

He lifts his head just a bit to peer around. “The lockers. The table…my other clothes.” 

Someone must have grabbed them from Larry’s locker, and he realizes it means they must have been trying to get him into them, to make him feel safer, more comfortable. The sweat from his panic and fear has dried now, leaving him cold. 

“Do you want to change into them?” 

He nods, and sits up so she can stand. 

“Let me fetch Teddy. We’ll help you, okay? Don’t stand up until I have him here.” 

They’re back a moment later, and he’s grateful for the help. His legs are still weak, his whole body hurting from how tense he was, still is. He doesn’t know when he’ll feel relaxed again, but their hands helping him into the warm sweatshirt and sweatpants helps. He needs to thank Larry again for bringing the clothes for him. 

“You don’t have to go back out again,” Teddy says. “Unless you feel ready to do it.” 

He thinks. Part of him wants to go back to this exhibit, to hide there and wallow in the feelings. 

But one night of wallowing will not send all the mass of confused emotions away. It will take time, and work, and he knows it. He has an eternity, so long as the tablet works, to do that work. To try and heal. 

The part of him that wants to go back out wins; the fourth king of the fourth king may have fallen, yes, but he rises again.

They all treat him carefully, Sacagawea and Teddy and Larry staying close to him as he settles at the same chair behind the desk. He’s content just to be out with everyone, to watch them run about and mingle and have fun. He isn’t feeling anywhere back to normal or better, but simply being out there is a victory, as he thinks on it.

Kahmunrah is dead. Ahkmenrah rises again each night.

Kahmunrah will face punishment for his actions in the afterlife. Ahkmenrah is surrounded by new family, friends, who care enough for him to pick up the pieces and help him through the aftermath of a night like this. 

Kahmunrah only survived, was willing to kill to do so, and still was deeply unhappy.

Ahkmenrah thrives in love and happiness. And that, he thinks is the greatest victory he can achieve over his brother’s actions. To live each night, and do what his brother tried so hard to prevent him doing.

Thrive.


End file.
